


dreams of being golden

by poetatertot



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Copious Amounts of Baking, Domestic Fluff, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gardens & Gardening, M/M, Mentions of Post-Apocalypse, Mutual Pining, Past Abuse, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-05-18 09:56:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14850593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poetatertot/pseuds/poetatertot
Summary: The ocean is a healer. This Jeremy knows better than anyone. It’s why he came back himself, when all turned to nothing; it’s why he took the others under his roof when the shadows at their back threatened to swallow them whole.It’s why he lets Jean in when he shows up suddenly, his pale face a soft light in the darkness.  Jeremy sees him and knows he can’t subsist as he is, alone.The ocean can’t change Jean’s past, but maybe it can wash his future into smooth, clean sand the way it did for so many others.





	1. prologue

On the coast there remains shrapnel of a world that once was—flotsam and jetsam, the earth jagged with jutting leftover foundations that hang over the sea. The cries of seagulls remain an omnipresent bell, a warning sign in their cacophony over man’s silence, a lone echo on the bare shores of a world that once spared no minute for their call.

It’s here, on the brink of _has been_ and _could be_ , that Jeremy makes his home.

He likes the heavy salt on his tongue—a flavor unchanged though the terrain bears no resemblance to what it was in his youth. He likes the rough wind that cuts grease from his skin in sure, knife-like brushes, the endless crash and hum of the waves beating on their beaches.

He likes the sun, watching it cast a glittering throw over endless blue plains. He likes the balance of hot and cold it provides when it rises and sets, the two worlds he balances between when he wakes early enough to glimpse gold-and-pink gradients.

He loves the ocean.

Jeremy isn’t the first to fall in love with the blurring line between earth and sky, nor will he be the last. He’s sure of it. He’s seen the spark lit anew in candles cold, wonder on the faces of men who lost all urge of inquiry. The ocean is a charmer, a sweet serenade that soothes the most serrated edges into blown glass. It takes the toughest of stones and rolls them smooth.

The ocean is a healer. This Jeremy knows better than anyone. It’s why he came back himself, when all turned to nothing; it’s why he took the others under his roof when the shadows at their back threatened to swallow them whole.

It’s why he lets Jean in when he shows up suddenly, his pale face a soft light in the darkness. The bruises on his skin match the ink of the sky, blotches that wound the way the moon tries to turn him soft. Jeremy sees him and knows he can’t subsist as he is, alone.

The ocean can’t change Jean’s past, but maybe it can wash his future into smooth, clean sand the way it did for so many others.

 _Time will tell_ , Jeremy supposes. All that’s left is to wait and see. 


	2. painkillers in your palm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there isn't enough jerejean in the world... so i decided to fix it.  
> this is going to be entirely self-indulgent and soft because jeremy and jean deserve the world! longer updates will come, but right now im in the middle of finals.
> 
> enjoy!

The first few days are the hardest.

Moving through darkness is something Jean is accustomed to, the way some are accustomed to walking uphill every day or going on morning runs. His eyes know how to pick up slights of hand in the shadows as easy as breathing—he must, if he wants to be ahead of Riko’s knife. His hypervigilance has saved him multiple broken bones.

Now, what was once a gift is almost a curse. When Jeremy and the doctor lead him to his temporary space—a tiny, attic room-and-half-bath with an overhead window that lets in the moon—Jean can’t bear to look at the stars. He lays on the battered couch stuffed in the corner and swallows flinch after flinch, trying not to look at the shifting shadows in the corners. _They’re not real,_ he scolds himself. _Don’t look at them._

It doesn’t work. Nightmares born from truth can’t be smothered by reason.

The first night is a blur, shadows overlapping Riko’s ghost as it lays into him again and again, bringing old scars back to life. His body-numbing painkillers cannot dull phantom pains or memories; the deep puncture wounds on his torso war with the instinct to twist away from ghostly, murderous hands. True sleep doesn’t exist in the countless hours between his arrival and dawn—there is only paranoia that follows him in and out of deep sleep, strangling him slowly.

The first rays of dawn bleed through the overhead window in gentle pastels. Jean almost wants to weep at the sight of them.

His vigil in the attic is lonely. Once the doctor—Kilpatrick, Jeremy calls him—cleans his wounds and orders bed rest, only Jeremy comes up to see him. The soft foods, clean bandages, and painkillers he brings on a tray are miniature peace offerings; he lays them next to the couch and hovers, hands wringing fingers, before tiptoeing back down the stairs. He knows better than to ask if Jean wants help after the first attempt, when Jean spasmed and tore himself free of Jeremy’s hands as if he was dying.

Now, every time he comes up, Jean pretends to be asleep. It’s easier that way.

The first week passes in uniform moments—nights haunted by demons, days haunted by worrying blonde men and half-remembered nightmares. The painkillers are both a bane and boon in the way they swallow the fire of Jean’s wounds and turn the world into flashes of deep slumber and moments of bright, blurry clarity. Jean dresses and redresses his wounds with scabbing, bandaged hands, just like he’s always done.

The dust motes in the attic swirl and swirl until Jeremy cracks open the overhead window one evening and lets in ocean-salted air. The thick wash of it clings to Jean’s skin like a smothering cloak, suffocating him until all he wants to do is bury himself alive. He dreams of waves beating his body until he can barely feel, water filling him inside and out until he’s a swollen balloon of cold, clammy flesh. He never can quite make it to the surface.

Jean may hate the stale attic air, but the ocean is no better. He stumbles up out of his nightmare and closes the window the first chance he gets.

He begins to stink. The sweat of his nightmares hangs over him in a putrid cloud, but he can’t quite bring himself to go downstairs. He can hear the other housemates thumping around below, talking and laughing as if they’ve never had a dull moment, and the idea of moving to their level feels so exhausting that he can barely make himself sit up to eat. He doesn’t want to bother with the others seeing him. He doesn’t want to bother with talking to anybody if he can help it.

He doesn’t know if he even wants to bother breathing. Everything is exhausting.

Then, it’s Saturday.

Jean’s eyes open and immediately he knows something is wrong. The overhead light is buttery and pink, the seagulls scream their morning calls, but there are no new bandages on the table. The painkillers he’s come to both rely on and despise are absent; there’s only an empty space between his cup of water and last night’s bowl.

Dawn normally brings the low murmurs of multiple voices, the hum of pipes running and thudding footsteps on the lower floors that tell him everyone is up for the day. There’s none of that now; aside from the gulls outside, it’s just him and the empty silence of the house’s eaves. His own breathing is almost too loud in the tiny space, a steady rasp in the quiet of morning.

Jean weighs his options. He can either lay here and wait for the routine to start itself over, soaking in his used bandages without any painkillers, or he can get up and make the walk down the stairs. He might risk running into one of the house’s unknown inhabitants—an idea even more unpleasant than coming face-to-face with hand-wringing, do-gooder Jeremy—but there’s always the chance that everyone has slept in, or disappeared overnight. It’s an implausible wish, but the only one he can hold onto if he’s going to convince himself to move.

Carefully, Jean slips his legs out from underneath the dusty quilt he’d been given and puts his feet on the floor. The chill from the open window prickles at his heated skin, drawing his warmth away into the dust and replacing it with the unfamiliar, uncomfortable ache of standing after days of being horizontal. His calves scream with the effort to stand; his ankles and knees pop with the pressure of heavy limbs and pounds of muscle pressing down. His side is a throbbing mess. It _hurts._

But if there’s one thing Jean is good at, it’s enduring. He’s endured thousands of agonies far worse than this and received no reprieve. There’s no excuse for becoming weak overnight—if anything, it’s a disgrace to his history. He’s spent years and years subsisting under Riko’s blade, surviving on the threads of silence. He can stand to hide among strangers for a little while. Just until he figures out where else to go.

 _I have to get up_ , he knows. It’s time to face the music of his new reality.

The wooden steps down to the second floor are agonizing. Every step he takes feels too loud, boards groaning under his weight with the creaking of his bones. By the time his feet land on the polished floorboards he’s panting, sweat prickling at his temples to match the throbbing pain in his left side. Every nerve ending feels as if it’s on fire.

He shuffles his way down a hallway lined with white doors to a bigger, polished staircase. Standing at the top of it he can hear the faintest _clink_ of moving dishes, the faraway static of what must be a radio.

The noise carries him down the staircase and through another hallway, to a room at the end of the house that doesn’t have a door at all. Carefully, Jean comes to a stop just beyond the door frame and peeks in.

At first, there’s so much that he doesn’t know what to focus on. The walls are goldenrod yellow, vivid enough to hum with an energy that prickles at his fingertips. There’s a table covered in a gingham cloth, mismatched plates and cups all lined on it as if preparing for a poor man’s Last Supper, and a sink full of more dishes and piles of gleaming soap suds. The whole room is filled with bright pop music that buzzes from a rickety radio on the counter.

And there’s _him._

The morning light casts a soft glow over his features, bringing the sharp blue of his eyes and the gold in his hair to new, vivid heights. He looks warm and rumpled like a favorite comforter, thick flannel pajama bottoms and t-shirt swallowing his short stature, and the glasses perched on his nose catch the light when he tilts his head to one side to check the pancakes on the stovetop. In the window’s illumination, Jean catches sight of a perfect portrait—slope of a Grecian nose, pursed full lips, a heavy brow. He’s stunned into stillness.

The radio crackles with a new song—some bubbly pop anthem from before the Fall—and Jeremy’s thoughtful expression blooms into a smile. He grabs a spatula off the countertop and starts singing into it softly, mismatched keys glancing over every other noise of his cooking. His legs twitch this way and that in an aborted dance; as Jean watches, he begins to bob in place, voice trailing up towards the beat drop until it cracks.

But then he slips into a twirl and whirls towards the door, and his eyes catch on Jean. The notes in his throat curl into silence. They stare at each other.

“Jean,” he finally manages. The spatula falls to his side. “You’re up.”

Jean blinks. “Yeah.” The word sounds croaky in his ears, his vocal chords remembering how to work after a week of disuse.

Jeremy’s eyes flicker over Jean, pausing at his exposed bandages and the way one palm curls over his side. His lips twist down, eyebrows raising sharply with a sharp exhale.

“Oh shit,” he says. “I didn’t bring up your bandages yet, did I? I’m sorry.” He steps back and casts a quick glance at the cooking pancakes. “If you just give me a second—”

“It’s fine.” Jean forces himself to straighten. He hadn’t even realized he’d been holding himself together—hadn’t been prepared to have anyone look him in the face, even though he _knew_ coming down into the house would be like this. The shame he feels burns in the back of his throat. “Where are they? I’ll get them myself.”

Jeremy frowns. “In the first bathroom, under the sink, but—”

“Okay.” Jean shuffles away before he can finish, making his way for the open bath he’d passed on his way to the kitchen. Light pours into the space there too, brightening sky blue walls and gleaming off a clawfoot tub like fresh polish. Jean sucks in a soft breath to still his heart and smells lavender.

The gauze and other necessities are kept in a big kit. Jean fumbles his way through the motions, ignoring the sound of Jeremy padding into the door opening and coming to a halt. The silence stretches, too bare to hide how Jeremy’s breath catches and dies at the sight of Jean’s exposed wounds.   

Jean focuses on the steady rhythm of his own heartbeat, the ritual movements of caring for his wounds. He waits for Jeremy to speak. The other boy says nothing.

In stark daylight, the remains of Riko’s last hurrah splash dark against Jean’s pale skin. Livid bruises cover his abdomen, arms, and face; a gash in his side where the knife slipped in so easily crusts deep red like an open mouth. Smaller cuts and welts cover him head to toe—echoes of the furniture broken over his body, the smaller objects smashed against his skin.

Jean became numb to the aftermath of Riko’s tantrums long ago. He has the scars—thick white and pink tissue, lacing and overlaying until mounds of it heap in certain spots—all over. He has to see them every time he looks in the mirror. He forgets that others beyond Riko’s grasp are not the same.

It isn’t the flesh scars that bother Jean anyway. They’re nothing to him compared to the scars _underneath_ —cold sweats and sleep full of voices, emptiness inside that yawns until it threatens to split his skin—that haunt his every hour.

Jeremy waits until he’s finished wrapping his torso to speak. “I’m making breakfast,” he says.

Jean doesn’t bother looking up. He doesn’t want to see the pity in Jeremy’s eyes. “I know.”  
  
“Right.” Jean can see him shifting in his peripheral, moving from standing on one foot to the other. “If you’re well enough for some solid food, then maybe you can come by for a plate?”

The idea of sitting at a table full of ogling strangers makes Jean feel physically ill. He shakes his head. “That won’t be necessary.”

“You’re not hungry?”

“I came down to shower,” Jean tells him evenly, “and to find my painkillers.”

“Okay.” Jeremy pauses for a moment, rocking back on his heels, and shakes his head. “Okay. I’ll just bring you up a plate then.”

 _That’s not what I meant_ , Jean thinks. A flicker of irritation pushes through the dullness of his thoughts like a spark. “No, I—”

“What’s going on?”

Jean stiffens. This was _exactly_ what he didn’t want to happen, the whole reason he’d taken so long to come down from the attic—

Jeremy looks to his right, his features softening into an apologetic expression. “Sorry Laila,” he says, his voice lowering. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”  
  
“I was getting up anyway,” Laila says from somewhere past the door. “Who’s already up? Because I had first dibs on—”

A girl with mussed, brown hair and huge hazel eyes pushes into view. Jean glares at her. She blinks back at him, her mouth opening into an _o._

“Oh,” she says after a moment. “You’re up.”  
  
“Evidently.”

“What’re you doing down here?”

“I’m _trying_ ,” he says, hating how his voice cracks over the syllables, “to take a shower.”

One of Laila’s eyebrows quirks up at his tone, but she doesn’t comment on it. “Alright then,” she says, stepping back. “You do that.” She turns to Jeremy. “Have you already made breakfast, or do I need to do it?”

“Pancakes,” Jeremy murmurs absently. He won’t stop staring at Jean. “They’re cooking.”  
  
Laila’s eyes flicker from Jeremy to Jean and back again. “I’m calling second dibs on the shower,” she announces, moving back into the hall. “Don’t use the green bottles, okay? Sydney doesn’t like to share.”  
  
“Duly noted,” Jean mutters. _Just get out of here already._

Jeremy stays behind, one hand trailing over the door frame. His brows are pushed down in thought now, lips parting and closing again as if he’s got something to say. Jean waits for him to struggle through his thoughts.

“The black bottles are mine,” he finally says. “You can use them. And there are clean washrags in the wicker basket.”  
  
“Okay.”

“If you need anything, don’t hesitate to come find me, alright?”

 _Unlikely_ , Jean thinks, but he nods anyway. “Okay.”

“Right,” Jeremy says. “I’ll just—leave you to it, then.”

He steps back, eyes roving over Jean one last time in obvious worry, then slips into the quiet of the hallway. Jean walks over and firmly shuts the bathroom door.

Washing himself with a wet rag is annoying, if not moderately painful. He has to take extra care not to get his bandages wet, dipping arms and legs in and out of the spray. Leaning to rinse the soap from his head is almost too much—his side stings so badly, he has to stop for a minute and just breathe. The whole process takes an absurd amount of time.

Still, stepping back out onto the bathroom’s fluffy rug, he can’t deny that he feels a little more grounded. Put together. His body will heal as it always does, skin stitching itself back together in itchy, infinitesimal increments. This, at least, Jean is familiar with.

The hallway is empty when he slips out of the bathroom. Voices hum from the end that leads back to the kitchen, but none of the other doors open when he walks back the way he came to the attic.

The pile of blankets he’s lain in for days are gone, replaced by a new, unfamiliar knit. He sits down carefully, thumbing the gold-and-crimson threads, and finds it to be even softer than what he had before. It smells thick with detergent, something soft and warm, and his heart settles just a little more in his chest despite his misgivings.

True to Jeremy’s word, a plate of warm pancakes sit on the coffee table. They’re thick and perfectly brown, a perfect pat of butter melting on top into gold. There’s also a few strips of bacon on another dish, and a small glass of orange juice.

 _Lunch is at 2,_ the napkin says. _Come say hi?_

Jean cuts a perfect triangle of pancake and crams it into his mouth. It’s fluffy and gently sweet, light enough to almost melt on his tongue like the spread butter—a piece of that goldenrod kitchen baked and brought up to the attic on a tray.

He doesn’t know what to make of it—doesn’t know what to make of Jeremy himself—but Jean does his best to pick through the food. It’s even warmer in his belly, molten gold and sugar, and he wraps himself up in the blanket before he can even think about taking the leftovers back downstairs.

He slips into slumber, and for the first time in too long, sleeps without dreaming at all.  


	3. eggs on your plate

The habits of a Raven are born from necessity. You always walk with a teammate because you need to keep each other in check; you always stay uniform in perfection because individuality is only needed for Riko. You always keep your head down and never speak unless spoken to because you need to keep all of your teeth.

You never look up at the sky because you need to stay numb to what can never be yours.

Jean blinks awake. Heavy midday sun pours through the skylight and splatters across his couch-bed. Every hair on his arms gleams under the golden cast, lit up in thousands of glowing pinpricks.

Gingerly, he pushes himself up into a sitting position. There’s sweat at his nape and across his back from the heat. It leaves him feeling flushed and a little sticky, yearning for another wipe-down even though he already bathed once earlier. It feels like _summer._

There’s so much light in the attic that he has to squint. He slides to his feet with growing ease—his stab wound is healing nicely, Kilpatrick said—and walks over to the top of the stairs in the corner. He can feel a coolness tickling over his feet there from the floor below.

It’s tempting. Jean knows now that there’s a squishy armchair in the living room, big and horrifically floral, that sits in one shaded corner. It wouldn’t be difficult to go down there and tuck himself into those thick cushions.

 _And then what?_ His one pastime—his reason for living, though he resents it—couldn’t be done sitting down. But he doesn’t even know if such a thing is still possible. The Raven’s court had crumbled with the rest in the first stages of the Fall.

Jean tries to think back. What did he do when he wasn’t on the court, back when being off the court didn’t mean being entirely incapacitated? What was that even like?

His sketchbooks are relics of a past he left behind in Marseilles. He can imagine them rumpled and stained from being lugged everywhere, tucked under his pillows in case he caught inspiration in his dreams. He had done it all once: pencil sketches, splashes of marker or watercolor, anything he could get his hands on to bring his world down into a perfect picture.

It had been nothing but a juvenile, futile effort. He wants to hate how naive he’d been. There was no perfection even in Marseilles, sketching himself away from groping hands and mouths that spited his existence. He was cattle even then, and to think he could be anything like the people he drew was a miserable dream at best.

Jean stares down at his hands. The scabs have almost completely healed, leaving pink lines and new skin stretching over his knuckles. It itches ever so slightly.

He wonders, given the opportunity to draw again, if he would even remember how.

“Jean?”

It’s Jeremy. He stands at the bottom of the stairs, a glass of water in one hand and a handful of painkillers in the other. His pajamas today are shorts and a tank—Jean can see how pink his skin is from the heat—and his hair sticks up every which way. There are even still pillow lines on his face.

“Jeremy,” Jean says by way of greeting.

They stare at each other for a long moment. Jeremy’s eyes trail from Jean’s face to his arms where the bandages have been peeled off to let the wounds air.

“Feeling better?”  

Jean shrugs with one shoulder. “Somewhat.”

Jeremy smiles with his whole face, lips pulling back to show off white teeth and one eye scrunching up more than the other. If he wasn’t already pink Jean imagines he would have flushed just a little; he’s already learning in the week that he’s been around that Jeremy does nothing half-heartedly, smiling included.

There are other things about Jeremy that Jean has already learned, too, though he tries his best to stay aloof. He knows Jeremy drinks two cups of coffee a day with too much sugar, and that he taps his foot on the ground while waiting for the carafe to fill. He knows Jeremy likes to wear red as if he’s terrified of it going out of style. He knows that the fresh blanket on the attic couch is Jeremy’s too.

By association, he knows what Jeremy smells like.

It’s a discomfiting realization, the first time he passes him in the kitchen and catches the scent again. He’d been curled up in the blanket for three days by then—long enough that the smell is fading, but still rich enough to catch when he’s willing himself to sleep without dreaming.  It smells almost earthy and soft, rich like wet soil being overturned with careful hands. Clean and calming.

 _How fitting_ , he thinks, eyeing Jeremy’s bright smile. Calming indeed.

“I was just about to call someone to help me make breakfast,” Jeremy says, oblivious to Jean’s thoughts. “Would you like to help?”

“Do you need me to?”

Jeremy thinks about this. “No,” he says, unperturbed. “But it would be nice if you did.”

That’s another thing about Jeremy that Jean’s noticed. The guy never _makes_ anyone do anything. He doesn’t ask Jean to pull his own weight with chores, or with cooking, or with anything else. He’s careful and polite, bringing him things he thinks Jean needs or even things he doesn’t, but he never asks for anything in return.

It almost annoys Jean. He doesn’t know what to do with behavior like that—with Jeremy, doing small acts of kindness without any ulterior motive. Ravens never do anything unless it benefits themselves. Riko never did anything unless he was the one getting the prize.

After a week and a half’s worth of Jeremy bringing him painkillers and making him meals and checking up on him, Jean has half a mind to tell him to stop. He’s well enough to move around the house now, and he knows where the med kit and the food is. He doesn’t need Jeremy cleaning up after him anymore. If anything, Jean’s accrued a huge, invisible debt to the guy.

He could tell Jeremy to just leave him alone, but it wouldn’t appeal to his own sense of duty. Ravens don’t do charity—they work tic-for-tac.

“Okay,” he says, and pads the rest of the way down the stairs.

.

Standing outside of the kitchen, Jean can imagine the scene as a painting. The tiny herbs on the windowsill are too perfect to be real; the orange gingham tablecloth is too bright to be tangible. Something distinctly nostalgic hangs about everything, though Jean has never been privy to making his own pancakes or washing dishes in a sunlit nook. Breakfast was always means to an end before—a balancing act to funnel down vitamins and nutrients as fast as possible, a race to fill his stomach before Riko decided he was done eating.

Breakfast with Jeremy is nothing like that. They step into the kitchen, all gold and bright and too-warm in the morning sun, and the first thing Jeremy does is crack open every window. Salt curls over the windowsills and washes the tiles with invisible hands. Jeremy leans into it, eyes closed and mouth parted, and beams bright as the sun.

“It’s going to be a good day at the beach,” he announces, and then, “what do you want for breakfast?”

Jean blinks away afterimages. “Anything is fine.”

“But what do you like to eat?”

“Does it matter?”

Jeremy opens his eyes. His mouth closes, pinching at the sides, and he leans back from the open window.

“Maybe not,” he says. “How does an omelette sound?”

 _I’ve said something wrong_ , Jean thinks, but he refuses to figure out what or apologize. There’s no need to expose himself when he’s only going to be here for a couple weeks and move on.

“Fine,” he says. “I’ll cut the vegetables.”

The fridge is almost alarmingly full of _things._ The crisper overflows with vivid veggies and fruits; the lunch meat on the second shelf stacks high enough to resemble a big, meaty block.

It occurs to him, then, that he doesn’t know how many people live here. Do many pitch in for food or is this just for a few? There were enough bottles in the downstairs bathroom to imply more than a handful of wanderers; the voices carrying up to the attic vary throughout the day and night, though he does his best to ignore them.

 _It doesn’t matter,_ he reminds himself. He’ll be gone as soon as he’s well, so it doesn’t matter. He plucks bell peppers and chives from the crisper to dice into tiny pieces. The chill is pleasant against his fingertips.

“Maybe cut some onion?” Jeremy suggests, sliding out a tray of eggs. “Alvarez likes her omelette loaded with the stuff.”  
  
“I didn’t know we were making some for everyone.”

“You don’t have to,” Jeremy amends. “But they’ll be up in a second. It might be nice to at least cut everything so they can just throw stuff into the pan.”

Jean wants to point out that they’ve never done anything for _him_ —he doesn’t even know who Alvarez is—but that would be complaining on returning a favor. Ravens don’t do complaints like they don’t do free charity. Jean swallows his words and digs for the baggie of half-used onion.

He cuts up enough vegetables to make a rainbow across half of the big, wooden cutting board. There’s onions and chives, crushed garlic and mushrooms, little cubes of ham and three types of cheese pulled out to open up. Jeremy whisks eggs with an expert hand and mouths along with radio stars wailing unrequited love, his lips soundlessly following falsetto. Jean tries not to watch him wiggle in his peripheral.

They’ve just thrown the first toppings into the pan when the yelling starts.

Jean freezes, fingers clenched tight around the knife handle. The cadence is wrong, the accent is wrong, but he can’t quite help it. He can already feel his thoughts beginning to flatline, evening out into something blank and smooth. He sucks in a sharp breath and focuses on the slices of onion.

The voices carry, volume rising as they get close to the kitchen doorway. Jeremy’s head snaps up.

“I’m just _saying_ , if you’re going to bring the house down the second it hits sunset—”

“Sleeping early is _not_ the same! You’re the one singing in the fucking shower at _piss o’clock_ —”

Noisy scuffling, the thump of bodies bumping against walls, and Jean’s shoulders rise automatically. Beside him, Jeremy lets out a deep sigh.

“Guys,” he says. Compared to their howling, Jeremy’s voice is quiet as the eggs on the stove. “ _Guys._ Some people are still sleeping.”  
  
“Doubt it,” one voice growls. The chafe of sleep still rumbles underneath it, hoarse with indignation. “Not with Alvarez screaming her fucking head off—”  
  
“Oh, sure,” someone else snaps. “It’s my screaming and not your stupid—”

“ _Guys_.”  
  
Jean finally turns around.

There’s a boy whose head threatens to scrape the top of the doorway with close-shaven brown hair. The only thing thicker than his brow are his bulging biceps and an ugly snarl, upper lip lifting like he’s smelled something awful. In the morning heat he’s pinker than a lobster, shirtless and still lined from sleep.  

At least a foot shorter than him is a girl with long black hair and skin brown enough to match the polished floorboards. The heat’s gotten to her too, apparent in her cheeks and the wisps of hair stuck to her temples, not to mention her startling bareness. She glares up without an ounce of self-consciousness, clad only a sports bra and boyshort undies, fists clenched at her sides as if longing to slug the boy in the chin.

 _They look odd next to each other,_ he thinks, distantly.

“Cade,” Jeremy says firmly. “Back off, okay? It’s too early for.. Whatever it is you guys are doing.” He frowns at the girl. “You too, Alvarez.”

Cade’s mouth moves around a silent protest. Alvarez steps back, eyes flashing, and casts Jeremy a _look_ , but then she sees Jean and the venom leeches out of her expression.

“Oh,” she says. “Look who decided to come out of his batcave.”

“Huh?” Cade swings his head around. “Oh, shit.”

They all stare at each other. Jean realizes belatedly that they must mean him. He clears his throat. “Batcave?”

“You know.” Alvarez shoves past Cade into the kitchen. The light catches on an impressive line of studs in one ear. “Like Adam West? Or did they not have TVs at the Nest?”

The jab is one Jean’s heard enough times to go deaf, but his stomach still pinches on reflex.

“We don’t waste time on unnecessary hobbies,” he grits, turning back to the cutting board. He glares at the pile of diced onion. “They distract from training.”  
  
“Right.”

The room goes quiet for a moment. Jean cuts the onion into tinier and tinier bits, pressing the knife maybe slightly too hard. He watches juice seep from the little cubes and seep its way into the wood.

 _Just a few weeks,_ he reminds himself. _It’s just a few weeks._

“Well?” Alvarez moves on, unflappable. “What gives, Jer? Decided one omelette day wasn’t enough?” Her feet scrape across the tiles noisily; a chair groans under her sudden weight, wood creaking as she sinks into a slouch. “Got a hankering for yolk?”

“Protein’s good for muscle growth,” Jeremy sniffs. “Do you want one or not?”

“I want one.” More creaking. “With extra onion. Is coffee brewing yet?”

“I’ve only got two hands.”  
  
“Fair enough.”

“I’m finishing in the bathroom, now,” Cade announces loudly from the doorway. “Don’t try to come in until I’m done.”  
  
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Cade scoffs. “Sure.” The floorboards creak in fading beats.

They fall into a different kind of silence, then. The eggs continue their sizzling; old primadonnas sing in flat keys about summer flings. Alvarez gets up after a song and fires up the coffeemaker herself, lining up seven mugs in a row on the last available counter space. She drops sugar carefully into some, measuring one or two spoons into each in an obvious pattern, but stops short of the last mug.

“Jean, how much sugar do you take?”

Jean looks up from the fourth bell pepper of the morning. “What?”

“In your coffee.” She nudges the last mug and raises an eyebrow. “Or do Ravens not do sugar, either?”

He opens his mouth; closes it soundlessly. The seventh cup gleams under the light, black and just a little chipped at the top of the handle. From this angle he can see a spidery fracture that runs from the length of the handle to the bottom of the mug.

Something odd rolls over at the bottom of his gut. Jean takes one fist and crushes it down as hard as he can, the only way he knows how. _Just a few weeks_ , he reminds himself.

He looks back up at Alvarez. Her other eyebrow rises to meet the first.

“Just one,” he finally says. “And no creamer.”

“Sure thing, Batman.” The spoonful drops in with a silent _plop._

The others come in twos and threes, bodies pouring in and out of the kitchen to snag drinks and toast and plates of eggs. Jean doesn’t bother trying to learn anyone else’s name; with Jeremy flipping omelettes and Alvarez perched on the counter next to him, the others take him in as part of their routine and skip over introductions entirely. It’s just as well—there’s so much frenzy over the next half hour that Jean couldn’t keep track even if he wanted to.

He still remembers to count, though. Eight extra bodies means that his presence tallies them up to a wholesale eleven. Too many for a small blue house.

Jean waits until all the eggs have been used up—along with all the plates, all the mugs, and all of the toppings—to turn to Jeremy. Morning has almost completely passed, allowing the sweltering heat of noon to tickle in the dip of his back with an impressive amount of sweat. The gingham window curtains are half-drawn to keep out the heat, though Jeremy leaves enough space for light to slant over the sink. He’s up to his elbows in suds.

“Eleven people.”  
  
Jeremy scrubs away at a fork. He doesn’t even look up. “There used to be twelve.”

“What happened to the last two?”

Jeremy doesn’t say anything.

“I don’t want to be your chore,” Jean tells him. “I don’t want to be some sort of charity case. That’s why I’m leaving.”

“You don’t have to explain yourself,” Jeremy murmurs. He tosses a look over his shoulder at the fridge. It’s covered in too many postcards and polaroids and post-its, enough to let something fly free every time it’s opened. Everyone in every photo is smiling.

“Nobody is going to press you for it, here,” Jeremy says.

Nobody was ever going to get the chance to, if everything went as it should.

“I can’t stay.”

Jeremy cocks his head to one side, mouth twisting into an odd shape. He rubs with furious vigor at the fork for a moment longer before abandoning it for a mug covered in cartoon dinosaurs.

“I mean it,” Jean insists. “Once I’m healed, I’m going to go.”  
  
“Back to the Nest?”

It has to be rhetorical. In the absence of both king and court, nothing remains of Riko’s castle. Jean had been to the site himself, the day before everything else fell apart; he’d seen the way the black rubble of the underground barely peeked out below dust, the way the earth had crumpled in on itself like a crushed soda can. It was as if the world had finally had enough of the abomination in its flesh and swallowed the Nest whole.

Jean liked to think it was burning in Hell, maybe. If Hell existed at all.

“I can’t stay here forever,” he repeats. “It isn’t right.”

Jeremy’s hands slow. “There are a lot of things that aren’t right,” he says, softly. “We can’t fix them all ourselves.”

Jean watches him sponge through three plates, a small bacon pan, and an impressive array of mismatched butter knives before he realizes Jeremy is waiting on him to say something else. He swallows, tasting the lump that’s been slowly hardening in his throat over this past week, and then swallows again.

_I don’t—_

Jean can’t get the words out. They sound too naked, too weak. “I just can’t,” he says instead.

“You don’t have to explain yourself,” Jeremy reminds him again. “I mean it. Can you get a clean rag out from the second drawer on my right?”

He gets an old dish rag out and begins to dry overflow from the drying rack. The sound of clinking dishes punctures the air.

“I know you’re serious about going,” Jeremy says, when they’ve almost finished. “And I was too, once. All I’m saying right now is to focus on getting better. Can you do that?”

Can he? When the nightmares flicker in his peripheral during the day, when every time he wakes up is as if he’s coming up for air. The salt air makes him sick the same way the painkillers do; he aches with every step up and down the stairs.

Jean leans against the side of the fridge. He can feel countless magnets and odd post-its under his arm, the press of all those smiling faces and bodies pushing in on his tired, bruised skin. The suds in the sink have popped down to bare, silvery gauze over the water; he watches Jeremy’s hands slide over the surface of a glass.

Jean is tired and too-warm in this kitchen. He can feel the throb of his healing wounds. His bruises are still visible when he looks in the mirror, and it occurs to him belatedly that nobody’s eyes lingered over any of it. Was it out of kindness, he wonders, or a lack thereof?

 _A few weeks,_ he needles himself. _Only a few._

“We’ll see,” he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, using this fic as my camp nano project: make me do the thing


	4. pencil between your fingers

There is a rhythm to the house, if you try to hear it—a dance found in thudding footsteps, a steady beat in slamming doors and rattling door handles. Jean does his best to turn a deaf ear to it in the first two weeks. He doesn’t want to hear it earlier anymore than he wants to hear Riko’s voice in his dreams—clamoring noise that smothers him, alien language wrapping around his head to push him into a tiny, single point.

But now, on his second Friday, he closes his eyes. He folds his hands carefully over his stomach the way the dead sleep, smoothing his expression into something blank and relaxed. And he _listens._

 _Watch for my foot. Did you hear about Andy yesterday? Those are my shoes. Turn down the radio, I’m talking to_ you.

Jean opens his eyes. The spiderwebs hanging from the attic rafters wobble on the breeze.

As always, he can’t help but compare it to the Nest. There are noises here that never lived in those dark walls; there are spirits here that could never stay warm underground where the sun didn’t shine. Everything in this house thrives in a manner that makes his hair stand up on his arms when he slips downstairs to use the second-floor shower.

There were more bodies in the Nest, but Jean thinks there might be more people here. It’s unsettling, a beast he doesn’t know how to approach. He almost doesn’t want to try—but then, he doesn’t have to.

 _Just a few weeks,_ he reminds himself sternly. To try is to assimilate. The only thing Jean should be trying to blend with is the wallpaper, maybe, or the couch-bed that he’s once accidentally thought of as his. The people here matter little in the scheme of things; he shouldn’t be trying to remember them, even if remembering things and being watchful is part of his Raven nature, his nature as himself.

 _Ignorance is equivalent to stupidity_ , the Master had told him once. Jean was inclined to agree.

There was Alvarez with her fiery temper, Laila with a temperament closer to the air. There was Cade, huge and stocky, and Sydney, small and silent. There was Steph and Martín, Alexis and Richie, Alice and—

“Knock knock.”

Jean opens his eyes. He doesn’t remember closing them; he doesn’t remember becoming numb to the footsteps up the staircase. He feels something unpleasant burn in his throat at the thought of going soft—but is that what this is?

_It’s only a few weeks._

He can’t become weak.

Jean sits up. Jeremy stands at the top of the staircase in a power stance, feet apart and arms outstretched forward. He smiles, whole and toothy, like he’s never known nightmares and underground hellscapes and ambiguous, ugly futures back East. He’s got a popsicle in each hand.

“It’s pretty hot up here,” he says. “How do you stand it? Anyway, I brought you one before the others eat ‘em all.”

“Thank you.” There’s a fudgesicle and a cherry-lime rocket. Jean plucks the rocket from Jeremy’s extended hand and breaks the seal at the top, determined to ignore how Jeremy smells like the blanket under Jean’s legs when it was fresh. The cherry flavor on his tongue burns too-sweet.

There’s no reason for Jeremy to stay, except that he came with his own food and the couch is too big for one person to hog it all if they’re sitting up. Jean slides over obediently to give Jeremy room and watches him sink into the cushions like he knows the furniture intimately. Of course he would. This is his house after all.

 _Or is it?_ Jean doesn’t know the specifics. He realizes, catching stray drips on his fingers, that he’s almost curious enough to ask.

“I hope you don’t mind me asking,” Jeremy says, when he’s finished his fudgesicle. He eats frozen treats the same way he eats his omelette, taking an annoying amount of time methodically making his way to the stick. “What do you do all day? Up here, I mean.”

It’s a good question. There isn’t enough pain in Jean’s body to incapacitate him any longer, no need for his body to seize sleep in fits and starts. There aren’t any boxes of books, or electronics, or personal belongings Jean brought to occupy himself with. It’s just the furniture, the rafters, and Jean, healing in increments on the outside. Jean, who keeps trying to draw but doesn’t know quite how anymore.

“I think,” he tells Jeremy. “And I sleep.”

“Isn’t that..” Jeremy pops his popsicle stick into his mouth and chews it. “Lonely?”

“No.”

“You can take anything from the house, you know. As long as you let somebody know you’re gonna use it first.”

Jean thinks immediately of the cushy floral chair, but this is probably not what Jeremy means. “Okay.”

If his reluctance to talk bothers Jeremy, he doesn’t let it on at all. He plucks at the loose threads in the cushions and tips his head back to stare through the skylight, mouth parting to taste the ocean. He speaks calmly and carefully, telling Jean about how he was thinking of convincing Alvarez to make bean soup for dinner, how Sydney doesn’t rinse out the sink after she spits, how the tomatoes are just about ripe to harvest in the next couple days.

Jean sits back the same way Jeremy does. He doesn’t remember closing his eyes—only recalls letting the low hum of Jeremy’s empty, warm words wash over him like a shower—and then suddenly the attic is too dark to be comfortable and there’s only the rhythm of deep breathing.

He jerks upright. His neck hurts terribly. The wound in his side smarts to remind him that it’s still there; his whole right side is slightly sticky with sweat.

Jeremy stays asleep on the couch. The moon isn’t quite high enough to bleed through the skylight, but there’s enough starlight to cast his outline in navy and violet. Dark eyelashes fan across his cheeks; his lips part ever so slightly.

Jean gives himself a scant moment to catalogue more little things about Jeremy—the scar under his left eye, the mole on one cheek—before ripping his gaze away to stare into the dark. Even slouched and almost drooling, Jeremy glows like a saint.

Something odd and unfamiliar rolls over in Jean’s stomach. He nudges Jeremy’s shoulder before he can let himself dwell on the thought.

Jeremy snaps up straight in an instant, eyelids fluttering wildly. He blinks through the darkness, confusion washing over his face before he catches Jean’s eye. Their knees touch briefly—a single, warm contact point against the chill of the night ocean air. Jeremy presses closer for a moment and then pulls away, leaving a trail of goosebumps behind.

“Oh,” he breathes. His face is cast entirely in shadow sitting up; without the light, his eyes are wet points of darkness. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“I just— It was really warm and the couch is really comfy—”

“Jeremy.” Jean’s mouth curls around the warmth of his name. Is this his first time saying it outloud? “I said it’s fine.”

Jeremy blinks. “Okay.”

Jean’s popsicle wrapper must have slipped from his hand in his sleep; red leftover juice drips onto the floor from the plastic at their feet, pooling out like blood. Jeremy uncurls one fist and lets the fudgesicle wrapper spring free and tumble to the floor too.

“I better..” Jeremy licks his lips. “I need to tell Alvarez about the soup. Are you coming down for dinner?”

Jean lifts one shoulder. “Probably.”

“Great. I’ll just.” Jeremy shifts in place, forcing the couch springs to squeak in protest. “I’ll.. go.”

“Okay.”

Jeremy stumbles his way out of the attic. Jean stays behind and sits in the dark by himself just long enough to gather his thoughts, then retrieves a washcloth for the floor.

.

“You want what?”

Jean stares up at Richie. Richie stares back, teetering precariously on the danger step of a stepladder.

“I said,” Jean repeats, “that I want to know where to find some blank paper. I’d prefer a notebook, if there is one.”

Richie frowns and adjusts his glasses. With loads of unruly, black curls and big, circular glasses, he’s the spitting image of Harry Potter. Jean wonders how many times he must have gotten such a remark before. He wonders if anyone brings it up now.

“A notebook,” Richie echoes. His nose wrinkles up, eyes scrunching at the corners. He taps a glue stick to his chin. It leaves behind a purple, sticky residue. “Huh. No, I don’t have one. But there _is_ plenty of free paper in the office.” He goes back to gluing together toothpicks without another word.

Jean clears his throat. “The office?”

“Yeah.” Richie presses one toothpick leg into a stick figure. “It’s.. ah. There we go. It’s on the first floor. In the back.”  
  
The first floor is a beast Jean prefers not to approach. Some things can’t be helped—mealtimes, nights where he wakes up dehydrated—but Jean keeps to himself and keeps to the attic like a bat.

 _Batman_ , Alvarez had called him. Maybe she was right after all.

On the first floor, odd shadows of surrounding trees are allowed to filter in with the sunlight across blue carpet runners and creamy baseboards. Photographs hang all over the walls, blanketing cornflower wallpaper and swinging precariously where Jean’s elbows brush them. Somewhere an air freshener mists out something tropical.

The office lies past the dining room and the den, tucked away in a half-forgotten corner. Jean curls his hand around the knob and pushes his way in against squeaky, rusting hinges. His eyes frantically track against darkness for several seconds before they can adjust.

As with all things in the blue house, Jean is distinctly reminded of something he’s never known for himself. There’s a massive desk with matching drawers, and a leather chair an old person might love to slouch into; there’s a wall of bookcases filled with titles in multiple languages and fonts, hardcovers and paperbacks and simple sheets of paper tucked on top of book spines. A big oval rug spreads over the floorboards, cushing a small lounge under a curtained window. An old map of the world spreads over dusty wallpaper, pricked with little pins and flags, and beneath it are two more maps of just the Americas.

It is someone’s office, once heavily-used and clearly loved but now abandoned. Jean lets the door touch its frame and slips in further to investigate.

The wooden desk is old. Older than anything Jean has ever physically known before this house—perhaps even older than that. The dark wood warps with uncountable stains, rings of unknown liquids and spattered ink and varnish smears that blend and turn the surface into a watercolor of browns. When he sits in the plush office chair—legs groaning, leather squeaking under his unfamiliar weight—his eye catches on a framed photo at the desk corner.

Multiple smiling faces crushed together. Cheeks squishing against cheeks; teeth gleaming in wide, toothy grins. Hair blowing over foreheads and into eyelashes as if the photo was taken in the middle of a bright whirlwind. Jean’s eyes trail over the matching noses, the similar creases at the corners of blue eyes, and realizes what he’s looking at after staring too long at the youngest boy’s face.

_Jeremy._

And—his family. A mother, a father, and two girls, one older and one younger. They’re all pink and bright, perfect pictures of health. Jeremy looks to be no older than thirteen, his teeth glinting with braces.  

At thirteen Jean was being shoved into dark corners and told to stay quiet no matter what he saw.

Jean swallows hard. There’s the odd feeling in his gut again, sour and heavy like a stone. He feels a familiar numbness seeping through his bones, weighing down clenched fingers and trickling into curled toes, forcing his heartbeat to slow to tiny ticking beats. He sucks in a sharp breath and swallows again.

Here he is, sitting in a chair that isn’t his at a desk that isn’t his. This house isn’t his; even the clothes on his back aren’t his. He is a stranger in a dark room, a familiar with only the darkness itself.

It shouldn’t hurt. No—it doesn’t hurt. He won’t let it hurt him.

Jean leans back in the chair. There’s too much staleness here to be comfortable, but the darkness is something familiar. The ocean’s tang doesn’t permeate every fiber and grain, here; there is nothing stopping Jean from closing his eyes and imagining himself somewhere else far away. Somewhere underground.

Does Jeremy know what it’s like to wake up each day and wonder if that’ll be the day that breaks him? Does he know what it’s like to break into tiny pieces, to powdery bones and pulpy flesh, and have to piece himself back together again? Does he know what it’s like to close his eyes and wish—

And wish that he could just—

Jean shoves away from the desk hard. His heart lurches in his chest like a running deer, an overworking gear threatening to go rogue. He presses one hand over it and finds his palm clammy where it touches his shirt.

He plucks the paper off the stack in the corner of the desk and flees shamefully. Thankfully, nobody sees him make his way back up to the attic.

The sun hemorrhages during midday. Jean normally hates how the beams melt away any night chill tucked in the shadows, filling up the space with an unavoidable weight that slicks his skin and makes his shirt cling to his spine. Now, instead, he sits down on the floor between the table and couch, right where the heat is warmest.

To be weak is to die. He knows this, but he cannot help himself. He’s already grown soft in the two weeks he’s had, allowing his callouses to wear on the old floorboards. A fool’s move.

 _Just a few weeks_ , he reminds himself bitterly. His time can’t stretch forever. He has to go sooner than later.

It’s already becoming something else, though—this blue house with Jeremy flipping pancakes and the radio crackling quietly in the morning. His weight on the other end of the couch, serene and oblivious of the ugly, cracking cement in Jean’s chest. His blinding, whole smile.

Jean thinks back to the night before. Jeremy’s head tilted back against the cushions, lips parted to breathe the salt. His eyelashes dyed silver by the moon.

Jean plucks one paper from the thin stack. He has a pencil stub found wedged between the couch cushions, and a nub of eraser borrowed from a drawer in the kitchen. He rolls them between his palms and sits back, letting the sun soak him through. He’ll burn, eventually.

He barely casts a shadow over the table when he leans forward. A hot, high noon.

Jean presses graphite to paper and begins to push.

.

The attic, for all of its pieces gathered by numerous people, is a space untouched by any hands aside from Jean’s and Jeremy’s. The others crowd at the foot of the ladder or simply pass by without hoping to achieve contact. Jean is less a member of the house than he is a guest, less a guest than he is a haunting.

It was only a matter of time before one of the others got brave enough to start looking for the ghost themselves.

The sound of footsteps registers in Jean’s brain half a second before he recognizes that the weight and cadence are wrong. His hand stills over the paper. He looks up, slowly, and relaxes his wrist.

Laila stands at the edge of the entryway as if she’s afraid of tripping over it. One hand stills, poised to knock against the open door; the other curls around one of her sandy braids absently. She looks around the room, taking in the jumble of things and the odd neatness of Jean’s carved space, the paper on the table and the pencil in his hand. She cocks her head to one side.

“I didn’t know you drew.”

Jean stares down at the paper. The curvature of a face he shouldn’t know so intimately stares back. He pushes it all away, forcing his hand to let the pencil stub go. His fingers ache.

“I don’t,” he says.

Laila doesn’t look convinced, but she doesn’t push it. There are few in the house willing to push anything, Jean is learning. “Lunch is soon,” she tells him instead. “How do you feel about grapes?”

Jean lifts one shoulder. “They’re grapes.”

“I know _that_ ,” Laila huffs. “Do you like them or not?”

“I don’t care.”

“Okay, fine. How do you feel about banana?”

“Is this a test?”

Laila’s mouth purses. “Alvarez told me you would be like this,” she complains, but her shoulders relax and she steps fully into the room. Jean watches her step from one clump of boxes to the next, taking the opportunity to examine the skylight from directly beneath it. The sun outlines her face gently when she tilts her face up to meet it.

“I know you like to be alone,” she says, “but we’d also like it if you came down sometime. It’s good for you to be out in the sun.”

“Did Jeremy make you tell me that?”

One of Laila’s eyebrows quirks up, just as it did that first morning. “Jeremy doesn’t make me do anything. It’s common sense.” She nudges the table with one toe. “Come on. I know you don’t actually like cooping yourself up here.”

“You don’t know me at all,” Jean points out flatly.

“And who’s fault is that? You’ve been here two weeks,” she goes on, circling behind the couch, “and I feel like I’ve seen you maybe four times. Come out to the garden sometimes. You don’t have to talk if you pull weeds or something, and the vitamin D will do you good.”

“Are all members of this house such busybodies?”

“Why, is it annoying you?” She leans in, peeking at his sketch. “Oh, is that Jeremy?”

Jean smacks the paper over on its blank side. “Get out,” he grits. “I’m coming down.”

“Good. Does this mean you’ll tell me what fruit you like?”

“Does this mean you’ll leave me alone?”

Laila twists one lock up with her finger. Her smile differs from Jeremy in its crookedness, one side hiked higher than the other, pinching one eye half shut. Jean doesn’t know what to do with the knowledge.

“Strawberries,” he says, finally. “I like strawberries.”

Laila’s smile goes even more crooked. “Me too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if there are any fluffy tropes you would like to see, go ahead and make a suggestion here or on my tumblr! it might just show up later..


	5. earth in your pocket

It’s not that Jean expected Laila to go back on her word. He hadn’t expected anything at all. Jeremy talked of blooms, of vegetables and fruits ripening on the vine, but it was impossible to imagine just how much of everything there was.

The garden is less of a small-time hobby and more of a large-scale production: tomatoes and sprouting gourds and too many curling green plants that Jean can’t identify without their little name tags, blooming flowers and trees that hang bright buds and branches heavy with waxy leaves. Everything is kept apart in even squares and lines, mathematical precision slowly being overtaken by nature’s course. It’s sheltered, it’s green, it’s—

It’s—

Jean stands on the back porch and stares. He doesn’t know what he was expecting but this wasn’t it.

Laila breezes past him in a wide-brimmed sun hat, her overalls rolled up to the knee to expose tanned legs. She stares out over the garden with hands on her hips. Alvarez follows behind with a glass of iced tea and stops on the top step beside Jean.

“It’s too early for this shit,” she says, but her eyes drink in Laila’s stretching form like a starving man.

Jeremy bursts from an open shed at the side of the house. His swimming trunks and ratty t-shirt look ridiculous alongside big, green gardening gloves, like he dressed himself with his eyes closed. A pale sheen of sunscreen gleams across his freckles.

Jean sips his iced tea slowly.

“The tomatoes need a few more days, minimum—” Jeremy tosses the sunscreen to Laila, “—but we can start planting the daisies today. What do you think?”

Laila does a much better job rubbing her sunscreen in. “Sounds like a plan.”

The two of them pull tools out of the shed to use. Alvarez curls up in one of the porch’s wicker chairs with her head tipped back against the cushions; Jean sits on the top step with a small notepad and pencil. He doesn’t plan to sketch anything serious—he doesn’t want to use up the good paper if the office stack is all they have—but expects to find something inspiring in Jeremy and Laila’s routine.

A routine it certainly is. Jean doesn’t know the first thing about gardening—doesn’t know the last time he saw anyone laying in the dirt and calling it a good thing—but the way they move around each other is methodical, neat. Laila gets to work walking up and down the lines of plants, poking and prodding at them carefully. Jeremy takes a shovel and scratches out a neat rectangle in the dirt lining the porch before beginning to dig.

At first, the shovel’s scratching is easy background noise. Jean takes his time doodling Laila’s bent form, her wide sun hat and billowing pant legs. She’s an easy target, standing up and crouching, adopting simple stances he races to scratch out before she moves to the next row. It’s relaxing.

Until Jeremy moves from digging up one side of the porch to the other, passing directly into Jean’s line of vision. Jean’s eyes flick up to him and freeze; his pencil stills on the paper.

Even through thick sunscreen Jeremy glows, a soft flush spreading from his cheeks down under his shirt collar. He gleams with a light sheen of sweat; his blonde hair, growing out as it is, sticks to his forehead and neck in thin, golden whisps. He should be gross, all covered in sweat, but he isn’t. He’s rosy and warm-looking and undeniably handsome.

It’s not that Jean’s surprised. He’s always been aware that Jeremy is good-looking on some level; he’d be blind not to. He just wasn’t prepared is all.

Jeremy tugs his shirt up to wipe his forehead and Jean counts out a healthy six-pack before tearing his gaze away. When did it get so warm on the porch?

Alvarez coughs loudly from somewhere behind him. “How’s the work going, Jer?”

Jeremy flashes them a smile. “Fine. Just a bit more of this and we’ll be ready to plant. Do you want to come help?”

“Nah, I’m good.”

Jeremy doesn’t seem surprised. He looks from Alvarez to Jean. “What about you? It’s not hard. You can just help with the seeds.”

Jean blinks. “I don’t know anything about gardening,” he admits. “I’ll be bad at it.”

“Have you ever tried?”

“Do I need to?”

Jeremy pokes at the dirt with his shovel. “You don’t need to do anything. I was just suggesting it, if you’re interested.”

Jean rolls his pencil between his fingers. He’s not _loathe_ to the idea. After living a life of heavy exertion, of years running and throwing his body into bone-breaking, skin-bruising exercise, the past few weeks of stillness have made him restless. Jean’s body yearns to do more than cut vegetables and sponge-bathe himself. He wants to _run._

He has four more weeks before he can do anything close to heavy exercise. Four more weeks of redressing his wound and checking for infection; four more weeks of sleeping on his side and being careful not to stretch too hard. Running is out of the question, but what’s a couple of seeds?

Jeremy smiles down at him, pink and pleasant.

He sets aside his notepad and pencil. “Alright. What do I need to do?”

.

“Now just—push it in. No. Wait. Not like that.”

“Like this?”

“No, see— like _that._ ”  
  
“That’s what I just did.”

“No you didn’t.”

Jean exhales noisily. “Yes, I _did._ ” He presses another seed into the dirt in the same fashion. “See?”

“Well, _now_ it’s right, because I just showed you,” Jeremy huffs. “Do another one. _Gentler_ this time. Like you don’t want to hurt its feelings.”

Jean squints at him. “Jeremy,” he says. “I hope you know you sound ridiculous.”

“Who’s the plant master here? You or me?”

“It’s actually _me_.” Laila’s shadow drifts over their backs. “And I say you’re both wrong. You have to tuck it in, like you’re putting it down for a nap.”

“Shove it in there Jean,” Alvarez calls from the porch. “Punch it. Put that fucker to sleep.”

“You’re _not_ helping—”

“ _Okay_.” Jean sits back in the dirt. “I get it now. You can all leave.”

All he’d wanted was something new to do—something that would allow him physical reprieve without pulling his stitches or having others lord over him. Something almost mindless.

Planting daisy seeds was turning out to be the opposite of all of those things.  
  
“This is my garden,” Laila says mildly. “You’re the trespasser here, batboy. If I were you I’d be a little nicer.”

“Yeah, Jean. You’ll hurt the seeds’ feelings.”

Jean scowls through the porch railing bars. “Don’t you have somewhere else to be annoying?”

Alvarez sucks obnoxiously on her straw. “Not until five.”

Jean may know the least about gardening but even he knows he’s too slow. The sun climbs faster than his labor, throwing rays across his back until his shirt clings to his skin and his breath is warm across his forearms. The soil presses heat into his knees like a fresh blanket; he sucks air in through his teeth and tastes rich earth on his tongue.

He takes too long to seed his half of the porch but Jeremy doesn’t complain. He waits patiently until Jean is done and takes his dirty gloves to rinse under the shed hose. The water runs from plastic to pavement, spreading dark smears over the bright concrete around the shed.

Someone once tossed sandals at the base of the attic for Jean to use. He toes them off now, pressing the hot soles of his feet into runoff, and heaves a sigh of relief. Jeremy aims the hose a little higher to help him rinse his shins. For a moment, there’s nothing but the splattering water.

Jean looks up through his eyelashes. Jeremy looks back. They’re close enough that he can see Jeremy’s freckles in crisp detail. _Too close_ , a part of his brain observes. They haven’t been this close since the night in the attic. Shouldn’t this be strange?

Jeremy smiles at him, soft and shy—and then the hose jerks up and water sprays all over Jean’s shorts.

He can’t help it. He jumps up half a mile and yells. “What the fuck?”

Jeremy dances back a couple feet, laughing. “Gotcha!”

There’s a moment where something like irritation spikes in Jean’s gut. What if he’d gotten Jean’s bandages all wet? What if Jean _hadn’t_ wanted to look like he wet himself through his shorts?

What had Jean looked like anyway?

The ugly spike in his chest melts in embarrassment. _Stop it_ , he hisses at himself. _Stop that._

But the longer he looks at Jeremy, the more ill he feels. Like he’s caught a fever and it’s begun to break. Like he’s jumped too high and has suddenly remembered to come back down.

It’s so hot. Jeremy’s all pink and laughing like Jean’s told him the best joke he’s ever heard and Jesus Christ, _stop—_  

He snatches the hose and, before he can think anything else, sprays Jeremy right in the face. “Take _that_!” His own stomach is full of swirling, buzzing insects.

Jeremy laughs, a full-body tremble that wrings bright noise out of his lungs. Water drips from his hair and slips down his face, streaking sweat and dirt into his open mouth. The bugs in Jean’s stomach hum louder.

And then he can’t think about bugs at all. They grapple for the hose desperately, hands slipping and water spraying between them or arcing over them into the garden.

“Hey!” Laila calls. “You’re aiming the wrong way!”

Jeremy flicks the hose in her direction. Water shoots through the air and splatters all over her overalls, all over the porch steps, all over an unsuspecting Alvarez who promptly drops her empty cup and bares her teeth like a wild animal.

“Oh, it’s fucking _on_.”

Water gets everywhere—all over the plants, who need it; all over the four in the garden, who need a better shower. Alvarez cackles like a hyena when she blasts Jeremy in the face. Laila, in a surprising show of strength, wrangles Alvarez into a headlock and shoves the hose down her back. Jean pistol-whips Jeremy in the thigh before getting water in his ears.

They shove and yell and slip in their own streams until the ache in Jean’s stomach turns into an awful growling, and then they’re dropping the hose and pushing their way down the hall, fighting for the closest bathroom. Jean is so wet he can barely see. Jeremy slips ahead of him, laughing openly as he ping-pongs against the walls. The floorboards gleam behind them.

It’s only when Jean’s perched on the toilet seat, his body wrapped in a plush, blue towel, that he wonders. _What am I doing?_

“Pass me another towel,” Laila demands from the tub. Jeremy, kneeling at the cabinet, tosses it over his shoulder. Alvarez sprawls on the big, fluffy rug in the middle of the floor and sighs loudly.

“Christ,” she complains. “I’m fucking starved.”  
  
Jean looks at all of them. What _is_ he doing, sitting in the middle of all this? It’s not like he belongs, the way the others in the house do. He’s a guest and nothing more.

“We skipped breakfast,” Jeremy points out, “so we should have breakfast burritos for lunch. It’s only right.”

_It’s just a few more weeks,_ he tells himself—and then hates himself just a little bit more.

“Only if there’s still salsa in the fridge.” Alvarez wrings out her hair. “Last I saw, Cade was mowing through it all.”

It’s only a couple weeks. The Master would be disappointed in Jean’s weakness if he was alive to see it. Anyone from the Nest would be.

_But they’re not here._

Jean doesn’t know how to feel about that.

“Jean?”

His head snaps up. They’re all looking at him, waiting patiently like they always have been. Jeremy’s eyebrows raise just a bit.

“Breakfast burritos?”

He swallows. “Yes, that’s fine.”

Laila nods, like she expected this answer. She whips around to Alvarez and starts talking fillings, toppings to scrape out of the fridge. Jeremy won’t look away from Jean.

So he looks away first.

It’s only a couple of weeks. Jean has always been a little weak. The Master always said so; Riko always said so.

_But they aren’t here._

Jean dries himself off and joins in on the discussion, just a little.

.

In the Nest, the Fourth of July was less a day of celebration and more just a day of the week. What was there to celebrate? They were good but could always be better; they were great but still not perfect. In the Master’s eyes there was always something everyone lacked, so nobody ever could celebrate.

Celebrating was for Riko alone.

Technically, Jean couldn’t exclude Kevin from that equation. They were a single item— _KevinandRiko_ , one and two—so celebrating was Kevin’s right by proxy. But he didn’t. Kevin was never in the mood to celebrate anything.

Jean disliked Kevin for a lot of reasons, but that, at least, wasn’t one of them.

He remembers, once, late-night practice ending with Kevin dragging him outside. _Just for a second,_ he’d told the others, because Kevin could do that then. He hadn’t outgrown Riko just yet.

They’d stood outside on the blacktop and stared up into the sky, shoulder to shoulder. The fireworks were already coming to an end at a nearby park; the stars could barely be seen over smothering smoke and pyrotechnics. Kevin sat down on the curb and chugged Gatorade, giving Jean a few moments to look.

They hadn’t been the first fireworks he’d ever seen—that memory belonged to his late grandmother who’d taken him down to the harbor for Bastille Day. He’d been so small then, barely old enough to understand the science behind fire in the sky, and the sight of all those colors above the boats had stolen his breath away. He’d wanted to paint the fireworks in all the colors he knew.

The fireworks at the Nest were nothing like that.

Kevin licked red flavor from his lips. Jean shuffled gravel across the blacktop. The fireworks were distant, explosions echoing quietly towards the Nest.

Jean looked up into the sky then and felt—nothing. There was no wonder, no thrill or excitement left in his body. He hurt from practice; he hurt from where he’d banged his head falling down the stairs the day before. He was in no mood to stare up into a fragment of his youth and compare it to where he was then. It was too close to self-pity.

He watched showers and swirls and five-petaled flowers explode into the air. Then, he went back inside.

He made a point not to go outside the next year.

Now, staring into a box of wrapped sparklers and poppers, a distinct sense of disquiet overcomes him. He hadn’t meant to be around for this—hadn’t meant to stay longer than it took to stand, if he was honest with himself—but there was no hiding from the others. They were tenacious, roping him into food prep and cleaning and the like with Jeremy’s words. _Please, if you could, I would really appreciate it._

“Less than last year,” Cade says, pulling out a couple. “Huh. I guess that makes sense.”

Laila sucks down her Diet Coke with terrifying speed. “Who would make fireworks after the Fall?”

“That’s why I said it made sense. _Duh_.” He pulls out one of the bags of poppers and jiggles it in Jean’s face. “How about we go outside and throw these around?”

Laila snatches them from his fingers and tosses them back in. “Before dinner? Jeremy will have your ass.”

She’s right—there’s nobody who takes mealtimes more seriously than Jeremy himself. He’s what Jean imagines a strict mother would be like, or maybe a cafeteria warden. Everyone has to eat, and on special occasions like today, eat _together._

The backyard may be dominated by the garden, but space remains beyond it for a grill and picnic table. Someone’s found another checkered spread to throw across it, a plastic canvas covered in little festive fruits, and every drink is required to use matching party straws Laila dug up. Strings of lights that Jean didn’t even notice before are switched on, the grill is fired up, and then suddenly he’s in the middle of a barbecue.

Jean stares at the table. They have paper plates and party napkins, fruit salad and grilled vegetables, warm rolls he helped roll out and bake earlier that day. All of it is hand-prepared. The smells mix and overflow, washing with the ocean breeze over his face. It smells _good._

Something like anticipation curls in his stomach at the sight of all that food. Anticipation—and loss. _Why?_

“Jean!” Laila pokes her head out the back door and waves to him. “Come in and help with the pies? I have to grab something from the store.”

He doesn’t bother pointing out that she could ask anyone else. There may be ten of them, but as far as food’s concerned, there might as well just be Jeremy, Laila, and Jean. Last Thursday Cade was too impatient to wait for breakfast and burned the waffle maker shut.

“Coming,” he calls, and follows her back inside.

The house’s interior has been descending into chaos all day. Though Jean has come to expect one or two people missing from meals, it seems Jeremy’s pulled out all of his charm to get everyone together for the evening. As a result, the house overflows with noise and movement—voices yelling down staircases, feet thumping across the floorboards, the first floor bathroom in a perpetual state of being used. He may know everyone’s names, but this is easily the most Jean has seen of the other inhabitants.

In the kitchen, Jeremy and Alvarez alternate between stirring pie filling and doing some sort of ritual dance in the middle of the floor. The radio blasts music at all-new decibels, bouncing trumpets and throaty vocals from corner to corner before pouring out into the dining room. As he watches, Alvarez brings the spoon to her mouth to sing and splatters red jam all over the stovetop.

Jeremy catches his eye. “Come on, come on!” He spins towards Jean and brandishes a rolling pin with one flourished movement. Their eyes meet. Jean dwells briefly on how this encounter is the exact opposite of their first one several weeks before, and based on the way Jeremy’s eyes crinkle even more, he must be thinking the same.

“Take the rolling pin,” he laughs, and Jean’s fingers close around it automatically.

Making pie crust is not as hard as planting daisies. Alvarez, as a second-choice helper, is immediately booted from stirring once she slops filling down the front of her apron. Jeremy changes the radio from salsa to something softer, letting raspy croons curl over their ears while he watches Jean flatten dough on the counter and keeps weird advice to a minimum.

The labor is—comforting. Not in a backbreaking, bloody-knuckled manner, but a steady rhythm of _push, reangle, push_ that slows Jean’s thoughts to a gentle stop. He ceases to think about who he was and who he might be now, where he is compared to where he was only three weeks before. It’s just him, flour smoothed over his calloused hands, and Jeremy, humming softly while he stirs bubbling fruit.

“My mom used to bake like this.”

He’s barely loud enough to be heard over the radio. Jean’s hands slow over the the pie tin, pressing dough in more gently like he might be able to hear him better. Jeremy stares down into the pot and shakes his head.

“This used to be our summer home, you know.”  
  
The photograph in the office had told Jean as much. He nods, gathering leftover dough for a top crust. Jeremy looks sideways at him.

“You knew?”

“I saw the photo in the office.”

“That old thing.” His mouth curves with a ghost of a smile. “I forgot he put that there.”

Jean rolls out the smaller circle of dough. “Your father,” he says.

“Mm.”

They let the radio bubble between them for a while. The filling cools just enough to pour into the shell; Jean cuts and sets his first attempt at a lattice with relative success. He’s mixing an egg to brush the crust with when Jeremy speaks up one last time.

“We made a plan, before. We were all supposed to meet here if anything bad happened and we needed somewhere to go.”

The egg yolk gleams like butter where Jean paints it on. He brushes in steady strokes and tries to keep his thoughts even. There’s no reason for Jeremy to tell him this when he’s done nothing to deserve it, or has Jeremy forgotten that Jean owes _him_ favors?

An emergency plan; a logical step to keep people together. Why hadn’t the Master made one for the team? It seemed like too great of an oversight for him to have taken.

Jean’s hand tightens around the brush. _Unless he made one just for Riko._

Jeremy opens the oven for Jean to slide the pie in. The cooking timer begins to click away an hour’s time.

He almost doesn’t want to ask, but the question sits on his tongue. “Did it work?”

Jeremy smiles. “I came back, didn’t I?”

.

What is there left to say?

All of the apologies in Jean’s mouth dried up years ago. It’s one of the thousands of ways he hardened himself against a world that wanted to crush him into dust; he doesn’t have any niceties left in him, none of the shallow words others fill the air with. He doesn’t know how to say he’s sorry without meaning it.

It’s always been about making it one more day. Not for the team, or for his family that threw him away, but for himself. He’s weak, worthless, always lacked something in the Master’s eyes, but he couldn’t give up. It wasn’t in his nature to surrender, so he had to protect himself the ways he knew how. It’s always been about protecting himself.

Jean follows Jeremy into the backyard and his ribs ache from the weight of something new. Something like pain in the way the corners of his eyes want to sting; something like sorrow in the way he can’t swallow anything but words. He _aches_ , bone-deep, and that should be normal but it isn’t. It’s unnatural because it isn’t for himself.

Jeremy doesn’t need protecting. The damage has been done—there is no going back to before, no turning back time to raise the dead. The Fall happened. They are what is left. Jeremy has to live with that the same way Jean does.

But still, he aches.

He watches him all through dinner. Jeremy glows like the morning sun, smiles with all his teeth like he doesn’t know how to do anything else. He emits warmth and the others lean in to bask in it. He doesn’t show any cracks of what he’s lived underneath.

It’s one thing to live through trauma and survive. It’s another entirely to thrive in the shadow of it, to bloom the way Jeremy appears to. The act chafes alien against Jean’s knowledge and burns his skin. How does he do it? Where are his scars?

“Hey Batman! Want a sparkler?” Alvarez crams one into his hand after dinner, before dessert can be passed out. “Here. It’s your lucky day.”

He stares down at it. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure,” she drawls, but a frown pulls down her lips. She leans in close. “Hey. Are you good?”

“What?”

“You’ve been staring at Jeremy all evening.” A lighter appears in one hand that she wiggles in his face. “It’s kinda weird. A lot weird.”

Jean looks at her. She lights her sparkler with a fluid, practiced motion, and waves it above her head like a prom queen. She’s easy and serene, all relaxed shoulders and slouched spine, but the thought prickles at the back of his brain just the same.

_What about you?_

What about all of them? He’d never bothered to ask—never bothered to consider how the others in the house came to be. They all simply _were_ , like the ritual mornings of coffee and dinners at seven. They were part of the wallpaper and photographs and creaky wooden floorboards, just as Jeremy was—but they all had to come from somewhere.

It’s not his place to ask; it’s not his place to care. Still, Jean looks at Alvarez with her sparker and he lets himself wonder.

Her eyes trail from the sparkler back to him. “What, you’re not gonna do it?” She presses the lighter into his chest with her free hand. “Light it up, batboy.”

The sparkler is tiny. Compared to the grand explosions over the Nest and in Marseilles, it’s nothing but a snap in the dark. He isn’t inspired to paint grand canvases—but he also doesn’t feel any of the horrible emptiness he thought he would. Jean peers at it, watching golden bits shatter into the breeze like a shedding star, and thinks that he might like this better.

Laila steps out into the backyard with the pie in her hands. Even from here he can see the steam that curls upward, and as she brings it to the table, he marvels how perfect and golden the crust turned out to be. He’d done something right for a change.

Thin slices are cut to ensure everyone gets a piece. Jean presses a forkful of warm raspberry-blueberry-strawberry to his tongue and marvels, briefly, in the sweetness of it. Across the table Cade smothers his slice in whipped cream; beside him, Jeremy takes his first bite and groans.

“It’s so good.” He beams, and the sparklers reflect off of his teeth. “You did great, Jean.”

_Yes_ , Jean thinks. He likes this much, much better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, feedback is appreciated!
> 
> also, i made a [spotify mix](https://open.spotify.com/user/xelaperez36/playlist/6K6bTowlgj5NDJzzap5K7V?si=RczBFHtuRfKBiVWey7gboQ) for this fic because why not


	6. shadows in your rafters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The past abuse tag becomes relevant in this chapter, describing a little of what Riko's done. It's nothing beyond canon-typical, but if you'd like to skip it, it starts after "he smiles" and ends right before "and then there was her".
> 
> Enjoy!

The world is unfair.

Jean knows this. He knows that when the world gives one treasure, it takes another away. There are no gifts given without something stolen, no blessings without an accompanying curse. Everything on Earth is born from balances made without cruelty or morality—they just _are,_ and to be caught in the scale of things is simply to live at all.

Jean knows this. But why, then, does it still surprise him?

Early July is heaven. Night fireworks burst into daytime rainbows made by arcing hoses and harvested vegetables roasted or thrown into salads. The ocean through his window stains less and cleans more; he wakes with dissipating scars and growing hair, a hungry belly and fading bruises. His body, against all odds, is finally erasing the measures of a madman. He can finally begin to heal outside and in.

Early July is heaven, but hell still waits around the corner.

The dream does not surprise him. Jean has lived a life too fraught with sudden torture to truly be surprised by anything anymore. Still, that does not mean it doesn’t hurt when it happens.

He curls up on the couch-bed in Jeremy’s old red blanket and plunges headfirst into his memories—memories of _before._

The replacement home looks just as the Nest did—shadowed, endless, claustrophobic and caustic. He weaves through black hallways and slips through black doors with the surety of a man who knows his prison. He’s on a mission; nothing will stop him but his goal.

Riko, too, looks the same. He paces his makeshift room in all black, fingers gripping wrists so tightly that blood threatens to bead. Dark hair flops into dark eyes—the only evidence of his unraveling sanity. The Master is not around to demand a clean appearance.   

Jean doesn’t dare speak. The razor-edge of Riko’s shoulders threaten to cut everything around him; his knuckles curl, white and red from where he punched a dresser. Split skin dribbles drying blood onto the floor. He is becoming violence itself, and Jean must stay quiet if he’s going to survive.

He stands, and he waits.

Riko doesn’t acknowledge him at first. He shivers terribly, muscles crawling under his skin as if they long to burst through; every movement trembles with untapped rage. He paces from his desk to the bed and back again, teeth chewing lips until they too threaten to bleed. He is an overflowing sink, a hose with one end straining swollen, and Jean can only take the blast as it comes.

And then, miraculously, he goes still. He freezes in the middle of the room—finally he’s seen Jean—and every coiled muscle relaxes into a visage of serenity. He stands straight; he sucks air through his teeth and exhales, pouring all of his poison out through his lips. He looks at Jean.

He smiles.

The punch comes from Jean’s left. It lands at his temple and topples him sideways into an old bookshelf, smacking his skull against the wood with a dull _thunk._ He slumps to his knees and clings to the shelf with scrabbling, desperate hands. Riko only gets angrier if he knocks out fast.

“After everything that I’ve done,” Riko whispers. He chuckles, a horrible expulsion of manic sound, and curls one fist again. “After _everything_ —”

The second blow slams into Jean’s sternum and down he goes. The carpet burns on his tongue; his blood pounds in his ears. Thousands of sparkling lights flicker in and out of his vision. He wants to vomit.

_Stay still and everything will be over quickly._

Blows rain on him like hellfire. He takes them, a ragdoll—legs, arms, torso, head—until he can barely feel anymore. He can barely _see._ His mouth drips full of blood; it seeps into the floor like spilled ink, dark and gleaming.

Riko’s foot comes into vision.

“Dying,” he whispers. “After all that I’ve done. And I get _nothing_.”

The foot winds back. Jean closes his eyes.

The second rain always does more damage than the first.

Life ceases its steady roll and becomes mere snapshots: a shoe poised over his skull, wet on the sole with something warm; hands, knuckles split wide, grappling his shirt; a wicked, small blade crushing sweetly into the battered flesh of his side. He is pain, and pain becomes him. There is nothing left to do but die.

And then, there’s _her._

There are a million questions still buried deep in Jean’s consciousness. How did she know? How did she find him? How did she get him away? He will never know.

She falls to her knees and cradles his face, hair haloing pale cheekbones like a descending angel. She glows too-bright against the shadows, all frosty-white and smooth, soft fabrics, and her hands are immeasurably gentle. Only her eyes betray the fire within—dark holes in her face, ash raining from fiery skies, a rage that aches to seep out and swallow the house whole.

“Renee,” he whispers, or maybe he doesn’t.

The darkness takes him.      

.

Waking is its own hell. When he opens his eyes, the attic’s shadows threaten to suffocate him. He stumbles over to the toilet to retch violently and slumps against the seat in dull, aching dry heaves.

What is he _doing_ here?

There has to be a reason for his arrival, but Jean can’t figure it out for the life of him. He never had a chance to speak with Renee before she disappeared—he doesn’t know how she knew to find him, to find Jeremy at this little house at the end of the earth. Whatever Renee’s intention, she had dumped him here with the belief that it would do— _something._ That was the way she worked.

Jean presses his cheek to cold porcelain. His brain throbs with vivid images of a life he’s trying his best to burn to ashes—the Master with his cane raised, Riko with his knives wet, the other Ravens with their backs turned in silent complicitness—and he can’t tear himself away. He needs to _go._

He barely has the presence to slip on his shoes. He leaves without a second thought.

Outside, the sky stretches in even grey-blue—colors of after-midnight but not quite dawn. The moon is beginning to set, nestled right above the hills, and he starts off the porch for it without thinking about how he’s never left the house before. He doesn’t know where this trail goes. He can’t bring himself to care. He just has to go somewhere, anywhere that isn’t here.

The land beyond the blue house is mostly bare. Chaparral doesn’t lend itself to natural tree growth, so the land rolls uninterrupted in smooth grass studded with vivid patches of wildflowers, clumped, dark bushes, and the occasional low oak.

Jean sucks in air. Saline batters his skin; the wind rolls cool and uncaring through his hair. What heat was left from sleep quickly shreds away and leaves him with goosebumps and the uncomfortable awareness that he left in pajamas and no jacket. His arms are completely exposed.

He follows the trail away with single-minded focus. _Leave, leave._ Rough stones and soil crunch under his sandals. The road curls around a hill and cuts him off from the blue house in a single, smooth stroke.

The grass extends out into darkness and—cuts off. He can’t see it, but he can hear it, as clearly as if he were in his Marseilles bedroom. He can smell it. He can taste it on his tongue.

The ocean.

He follows the trail as it winds slowly, carefully, towards the bluff’s edge. The edge of the cliff rises and falls with his stumbling movements; gravel slips into his sandals to bite at soft soles, dirtying his feet in dust and dirt. The ocean roars from somewhere beyond, and then it’s _there._

Jean stands frozen at the top of the cliff. Beneath him, the sea stretches out into infinity as a glittering, dark blanket.  

He sucks in a deep breath. His insides are hollow, long-scraped of any heat they might have harbored, but he still wants to be _warm._ He breathes and he breathes, desperate to feel that rising lump; he aches for the long-gone prickle of something in his eyes. He can’t feel any of it.

But God, does he want to. Now of all times, he wants to.

Riko and Kevin went to the beach. They went multiple times, but Jean was never invited—too weak to waste time going, too flawed to be allowed a rest. He stayed in the Nest and banged his knees while they waded in the Atlantic. He swallowed his own blood while they tasted sea salt and popsicles.

Seven years.

The water here is different from Marseilles. It roils and froths like a living bathtub, foaming onto grey sand in heavy, sloshing footfalls. It churns and trips into itself unevenly, caught between incoming waves and outgoing lapses. It’s on the wrong side.

But still, even with all that the ocean is not, it still _is._ It’s home before he knew what home’s value could be, a tenuous thread to that little boy who looked at the sky and dreamed of drawing new constellations.

Jean trips down the cliffside, following the trail until it fades out into open sand. He stares at the expanse of it; he slips off his sandals and curls his toes into cool, soft granules.

Seven years, and he’s found his way back.

But at what price?

The dreams slide over his skin in oily, thick tendrils. No, not dreams— _memories_. Memories of what he’d done to survive, what he’d survived to breathe one more day. He feels ill under the weight of it all.

He doesn’t deserve this. He’s certain of it, the sickening weight of _I made it and they did not_ colliding with _I am broken and they were too_ to sink down into his stomach. Perhaps the others had only been looking after themselves; perhaps they had not been shattered as badly without being sold into the sport. They were all competitors on the same side. But it didn’t mean they weren’t all Ravens.

The Nest had been hell, but he’d lived in it long enough to stop feeling his burns. The absence of it now brings the wounds to light; he’s all exposed, glistening blisters, peeling red skin that doesn’t know how to heal. He’s feverish with his unexpected freedom in a way that both thrills him and terrifies him to the bone. He is, against all odds, the lone survivor.

 _They weren’t Court material anyway_ , Riko had sneered. He’d kicked the rubble with one shoe, not even bothering to see where it rolled. _Nothing was wasted._     

How bittersweet irony was. Jean, saved by a brief excursion to be tortured. Quick release exchanged for thirty-six extra hours of life-rending, agonizing pain.

 _Balances._ Life was full of them.

“I thought I heard you up.”

Jean doesn’t move. Suns aren’t supposed to shine at night, but he knows he’ll be blinded if he turns back to check. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Me neither.”

They stand side by side, two figures at the edge of an endless, inky sea.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

 _Kevin’s missing_ , Riko had snarled. His spit burned where it landed. _You’re going to tell me where he went._

_I don’t know. I don’t know—_

Liar. _I’ve heard you two talk. You will tell me, or I’ll cut it out of you._

Life was loss—losing Marseilles, losing his grandmother, losing his freedom, losing the last person on Earth who saw what he was capable of being had he not lost everything. Where was the swingback? When would the balance tip in the other direction?

Jean stares out over the ocean. The waves ripple inward and outward, back and forth.

“I wasn’t supposed to live,” he murmurs.

“The Nest?”

He kneels and plucks a shell from the sand. “Riko.”

A lull stretches between them. Jean slows his breathing, pushing to keep pace with the tide. His heart ticks a steady beat in his chest. _Alive, alive._

“There could never be another season.”

“No,” he agrees. “But Riko believed it would come anyway. Some day.”

“Did you?”

He throws the shell. The sound of it meeting the waves is lost to their crash and tumble. “No. But I had nowhere else to go.”

Feet shuffle forward; a body bends and straightens in his peripheral. The shell pressed into his hand feels impossibly smooth, warmed by those gentle fingers. “Me neither.”

Jean finally looks at him, then. The moonlight turns his skin to porcelain; his hair, to silver. His eyes, illuminated by the glow, are all grey-white, framed by white eyelashes. He’s just as bright as Jean knew he would be, just as painful to look at as he predicted. He’s ethereal.

Jeremy’s hands curl around a third shell. He looks up at Jean with his own undicernable expression. “Everything was there,” he says, “until it wasn’t.”

“You had a plan.”

“The plan was meant for more than just me. It was _ours_.” He shook his head. “I didn’t plan for what would happen if they didn’t make it. I only planned for—” He shakes his head again; exhales loudly. The shell flies from his fingers in a perfect arc and disappears. “I didn’t know what to do.”

Jean imagines the house without nine extra bodies. It seems too large for one Jeremy, bright as he is. “The others were part of a new plan, then.”  
  
“No,” Jeremy says. “First it was Laila and Alvarez. Then there was a new plan.”

“A good Samaritan to the very end.”  
  
“What else could I do? Say no?” His mouth presses tight and thin. “They had nowhere else to go either.”

Lose one family and gain another. Even with the world ending, it still attempted to keep the balance. “How did Renee know to find you here?”

“Radio goes a long way. And—there’s a way. In town.” Jeremy makes a gesture with one hand. “If you stand under it, it still works.”

“She called you.”

“No.” His eyes rise to meet Jean’s. “Kevin did.”

Jean stares back. The shell in his hands stops turning; his whole body stills.

“He wasn’t with her,” Jeremy says. “But he knew where she had gone. He called ahead of time to make sure I had room.”

Jean swallows. This whole time he’d thought it was—but Kevin had abandoned him long ago. Too long ago. _I am the lone survivor._

Guilt of getting out was new to Jean. He imagined it was not new to Kevin.

“I hear they’re building up a new team down south,” Jeremy admits. “I hear about it when I go into town. They’ve got Kevin’s dad as the coach and everything.”

Of course. In a world where exy was the sun rising and setting, Kevin could do nothing else. He couldn’t even conceive it. He didn’t know life before exy the way Jean had.

Jean looks down at Jeremy, his calm face illuminated by the setting moon, and wonders. Jeremy had had a life before exy—a life even after it, before the Fall took what was left. He’d had a future, and a family, and friends who loved him as much as they loved themselves. He’d had everything. Now he had—what? A house full of people who carried as little as he did, a garden full of vegetables that grew despite the harsh seaside salt?

“How do you do it?” Jean asks. “After everything that you lost. How do you live with yourself?”

Jeremy stares out over the waves. The wind ripples through his hair, pushing blonde locks up with invisible hands. He tucks his hands into his pockets and Jean notices for the first time that he’s in pajamas too, flannel things with too-long pant legs that drag in the sand.

“First,” he murmurs, “you live day by day. Then by the week. Then the months, until you can string time along on a string and not think about it. You find—things. Reasons. People.”

A house full of people; a garden full of vegetables. A blue house on a bluff, close enough to the ocean to hear the waves.

Jean runs his tongue over his teeth. “I don’t have—” Other people. Other things. All he has is himself.

But was that really true?

He thinks about the past four weeks in the blue house. Breakfasts salty-sweet-savory made by careful hands, afternoons on the porch with iced tea and Alvarez’s lazy humming in his ear. Water dribbling into flower beds where daisies had been seeded and grew, oblivious to life’s complications. Fireworks snapping over upturned faces, mouth forming words and laughter and compliments like _Jean this pie is so good, did you make this?_ Jeremy’s proud smile behind it all. Jeremy’s head bobbing to music on the radio. Jeremy sleeping on the couch-bed with his features even and smooth.

He sucks in a soft breath and lets it go.

“You said you weren’t supposed to live,” Jeremy says. “But maybe you should try now. For yourself.” He lifts his eyebrows, serious. “You can start small. It’s not a bad thing to start small.”

Jean looks out over the ocean. The world is beginning to come to light—not quite brightening, but on its way there. The sky is less black and more blue; the waves are less ink and more water. Saltwater, spraying their faces and washing them clean. It ruffles Jeremy’s hair lovingly, tousling him in a way sleep could not.

Jean is starting small.

“Alright,” he says. “Okay.”

Jeremy looks up. Jean looks down. The moon hasn’t quite set, but the sun’s already risen right there on the beach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who's read up to this point! I have a few chapters left and I hope to get them all up before I move in September. 
> 
> As for the accompanying [andreil series](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1088115), I wasn't expecting to get such a happy response from people. I really love writing it and I have so many ideas I'd like to put down for you guys to read. Expect more apocalypto-stickball in the foreseeable future! 
> 
> As always, your thoughts and feedback are appreciated!

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](http://poetatertot.tumblr.com/) // [playlist for this fic](https://open.spotify.com/user/xelaperez36/playlist/6K6bTowlgj5NDJzzap5K7V?si=RczBFHtuRfKBiVWey7gboQ)


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